Two Heads are Better than One
by polar bearyl
Summary: The first vivid realization of wrongness came to Sakura when she was two years old. (Or: Unknown to literally everyone else, Team 7 will be a six-man squad instead of four because the resident kunoichi holds two people in her small body.) (Also on AO3)
1. Chapter 1: Age 2 & 5

**I think I had a little mental break and (** peers at my unfinished time travel stories **) yeah, I think I'm following a theme with experimental time travel fanfics.**

 **Disclaimer: I obviously don't own Naruto or else Neji would have lived, damn it.**

* * *

The first vivid realization of wrongness came to Sakura when she was two years old.

She was travelling with her parents to the Land of Iron to visit one of the Haruno Clan compounds. The Haruno Clan was a clan of merchants, ridiculously rich because of their trade in fabrics, food, furniture, and basically anything useful enough in daily life while simultaneously extravagant which means the majority of their customers were nobles. Fifteen years before Sakura's birth, her father ran away to pursue his dreams as an artist and the clan head, her grandfather, all but disowned him. When Haruno Kazuki heard that his wayward son married a shinobi from the Fire Country and had a daughter these days, he called for Haruno Kizashi to be summoned for the first time in seventeen years.

Sakura tired easily back then like most children did, so she spent the majority of the trip sleeping while bundled up in thick winter clothes. That was when it happened - she dreamed of a pale hand holding an open book. Shaky scrawls of various animals could be vaguely seen on the pages.

 _"You're getting better at that, little brother," said a voice from the sidelines. She turned her head to look at the bluish-white-haired boy standing by the doorpost. Nii-san , her mind supplies gleefully. He was bruised and visibly sweaty and dirty, but she didn't care, because Nii-san was home!_

 _"You don't have to lie," she replied, and the tug on her lips felt genuine. "Welcome back."_

Initially, Sakura dismissed them as simply strange dreams of an overactive imagination, but for nights on end the dreams kept coming, even as they returned to Konoha with more fortune than her parents knew what to do with. She would admit, they were quite scary. The fortune, that is. The dreams felt more familiar than anything else.

 _"-look, it's you!"_

 _"How did you do that?"_

 _"-sama said that I was a cut above the rest. Did he tell you that, too?"_

 _"I still can't do it right."_

 _"Nii-san, thank you."_

The events in her dreams were choppy at best, muffled and painful at worst, and she realized that none of them were in order. She kept seeing the bluish-white-haired boy, her nii-san , in her dreams at different ages and different times. She saw other people, too: a blonde who wore too much purple, a young man with blood in his eyes, a boy who had the sun in his heart, to name a few.

Haruno Sakura grew up with these dreams.

. **age 5**.

"Your daughter is amazing, Mebuki."

Sakura was lying on her stomach on the sitting room's floor, a pencil in her hand and a sketchpad opened in front of her. On the opened page was a half-finished sketch of her mother. She made sure to draw the subtle laughter lines on her mother's young face, around her eyes and on her lips. It was impressive, even more so for a five year-old .

Her mother was standing with her guest a few feet away, overlooking her daughter with a proud gleam in her eyes. "Kizashi calls her a genius," Mebuki said wistfully, "He's not wrong."

"Definitely not mistaken there," her mother's friend replied, "Does that mean you're going to enroll her in the civilian school?"

There's a pause before Mebuki answers, "We don't know yet. Kizashi thinks it would be safer for her there. I disagree; she won't be taught how to protect herself during life-threatening situations in a civilian school - at least, I think so - but then again, being a shinobi basically guarantees her a life filled with death."

Mebuki didn't want to admit it to herself either, but the thought of her daughter running around killing people frightened her, never mind the blood on Mebuki's own hands.

With a small sigh, Sakura closed her sketchpad and placed both it and her pencil on the table. She didn't want to hear another spiel about her innocence. Unknown to her parents, she lost it a long, long time ago, and she sees more dead people in her dreams than she knows in real life. She would tell them that if only it wouldn't result in a Yamanaka getting sicced on her.

Also, her mother has killed a total of thirty people over the course of her life before leaving active duty due to an injury to her leg. Hypocrite, Sakura thought strangely gleefully.

With a quick goodbye to her mother, Sakura put on her sandals and walked towards the park. She was getting too pale due to her penchant for staying indoors and a voice in her head had been berating her lately for being such a hermit. It sounded suspiciously like her grandfather. Speaking of which, she was quite glad to know that Kazuki was repairing his bonds with his eldest son.

Her father was off with her grandfather, too, bathing in some high-end onsen away from the Land of Fire for some 'bonding time'.

The park was unusually empty. It was always teeming with people whenever Sakura walked past it with her mother on their way to the markets, but now it seemed as if there was a repellent that stretched a twenty-foot radius. Upon walking closer, Sakura spotted it - or rather, him .

She had seen him before but only in her dreams, and for a while she didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He was the boy with the whiskered face. His heart was kind and good , everything she was not, and though she called him the rudest nicknames and he blatantly showed annoyance with her in the majority of her dreams, she also recalled dreams wherein he made her heart soar with unfamiliar feelings as its wings.

She also saw him turn into a semi-fox-like monster in her dreams a few times.

If Sakura had been any other child, she would have run away. Any other child's mother or father would have warned them to stay away from the demon child. But she wasn't. Her parents knew the rumors about the blonde boy, that he was supposedly a demon, but neither Mebuki nor Kizashi gave her explicit warnings to stay away. And furthermore, she had been dreaming of people who she never met before and now she was seeing one of the more prominent fixtures of her mind. Sakura certainly wasn't going to let this moment pass.

Sakura took a deep breath and approached him. "Hi," she said. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears. The boy's head snapped up to look at her so quickly that she thought he might get whiplash and he stared at her with wary cerulean eyes. For a moment she wondered what she would say, and she briefly considered how this may not be a good idea after all. And then she blurted out, "You looked lonely."

The boy's eyes narrowed as he looked her over. He wouldn't find anything except for a socially awkward five-year-old with pink hair. "So what if I did?" the boy asked, sounding a little defensive.

She shrugged, aiming for nonchalance. "Do you want to play tag?" she asked.

"...Really?"

Sakura nodded. The blonde looked dumbfounded for a moment, and then, with more enthusiasm, he replied, "Okay."

And so Haruno Sakura became a long-lasting fixture in Uzumaki Naruto's childhood.


	2. Chapter 2: Age 6 & 7

**Okay, I now remember that there are no tags on like ao3 that can give readers clues on the story, so I'll say it now: this is a time travel story with an added mess - a.k.a. the body sharing, which will also be explained in the next chapter. There'll be three or four chapters of academy/childhood era and then genin days.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.**

* * *

The first time Sasuke spoke to them was on a cold afternoon.

.

It's raining heavily, the sound of drops of water crashing against the metal roof of the shed outside the academy reverberating in the air. Sasuke shivers involuntarily as the wind blows the rain a few degrees sideways and shoves his hands into his jacket's pocket. He prays for his Itachi-nii to come quick and pick him up already.

He's not quite the only one stuck in the academy still due to the bad weather. If he looks back to the front of the building, he can clearly see a group of children from the smaller clans and civilian families in Konoha waiting for their own parents or siblings to pick them up. In the corner of his eyes, he sees the Hyūga in his class – Hinata, if he remembers correctly – being carried by a woman with the same pearl-white eyes, a wide, red umbrella over her head.

He dismisses them from his mind and looks back to the group of children still inside the academy building. A small, nearly nonexistent part of Sasuke regrets walking out of the building as fast as he could, because now he's all alone and waiting for his brother who better not have been called out to another mission.

Sasuke huffs and crosses his small six-year-old arms over his chest and decidedly does not pout. He doesn't.

There's a sudden laugh followed by an indignant shout. Coming out of the gates, Sasuke sees one of the two outcasts grinning and looking back at something – or someone – that's beyond the gates. Her pink hair is slightly damp despite the pale pink umbrella over her head. And really, what was her mother thinking? Her hair's already pink, why in the world did they let her own an umbrella that's one shade lighter than her locks?

"Naruto-kun!" the girl calls, eyes glittering with mischief, "Last one home is a rotten bowl of ramen!"

All of a sudden, there's a blonde boy holding an orange umbrella barreling into the pinkette, sending the both of them toppling into the mud. He's the other half of the classic comedy act in Sasuke's class, the boy that everyone seems to hate, which is understandable if Sasuke thought about his pranks. The recent one turned everyone's skin various colors, from the brightest shade of yellow to the dullest purple, like a bruise, and Sasuke still wonders how the hell he pulled that off.

He got his skin turned blue which was… not all that bad, honestly. At least it wasn't green like that Yamanaka girl's.

Sasuke half-expects the girl to get mad, the other half of him expecting her to start bawling. She's a girl after all – Ino cried when Shikamaru kicked dust into her face during sparring the other day. This girl got mud all over herself, which is a hundred times worse than dust. But don't tell anyone Sasuke thought so, or else Shisui would tease him about how much of a clean-freak he is.

Surprisingly, the girl neither gets mad nor does she cry. Instead she laughs, loud and just a little bit squeaky and the blonde boy joins in.

They're friends, Sasuke ignores the stabbing pain in his stomach as he thinks of the awkward, stilted conversations he was sometimes subjected to in class and in the clan when faced with other children. Feeling like an intruder of some sort, Sasuke looks away and stubbornly starts making a run-through of katas in his head while he waits for his brother. He'll come around; he promised.

"Hey," says a voice behind him and Sasuke most definitely does not jump half a meter into the air. He whirls around to see the amused face of the class' number one prankster, the weird whisker marks on his cheek stretching as he smiled. "Are ya waiting for someone?"

"We thought you were, because, well," the girl pipes up and gestures to the red umbrella in Sasuke's hand, "You can go home if you wanted, but you're not," she shrugs, folds her umbrella, and lets it lean against the shed's wall as she shelters herself from the rain, and pats off the cake of mud from her white shirt. The boy follows suit. That'll be a pain to clean later, Sasuke thinks.

Briefly, the inborn clan pride and 'what's-it-to-you' mentality threatened to overcome him, but Sasuke stopped last second. Instead, he says, "I'm waiting for my brother to take me back to the compound."

"Compound?" the blonde - he's in my class, Uzumaki, I think - asks.

"Like a clan compound," at the boy's puzzled look, the girl clarifies, "Like a mini-village where all your neighbors belong to the same clan as you."

"Oh."

"That's a good way of putting it," Sasuke says, a little thrown because- well, how does one react to impromptu conversations? It hits him then and there, the realization of how lonely he truly was. Is. He doesn't have friends outside the compound and even then, it seems most kids only talk to him because he's the son of the clan head.

The girl smiles, eyes closed and lips stretching upwards, vaguely reminding Sasuke of a fox. It hits him right then - whisker marks, fox smiles - the two kids in his class weren't simply friends. Shisui had said that best friends often 'complement' each other. This must be what he was talking about.

These two were best friends. There's a big difference. Sasuke stupidly feels like the outsider now despite the fact that the two kids were the ones to engage him in the conversation.

When neither of the two walk away nor say anything else, Sasuke tries to muster up the confidence his mother tried to ingrain. However, instead of saying something polite that would likely lead to smalltalk, he - accidentally - blurts out, "What are you still doing here?"

He sees the boy's shoulders tense, the girl's green eyes flicker. Ah, yes. Open mouth, enter foot, choke; the classic Uchiha Sasuke maneuver.

"Fine," the blonde boy huffs, clearly offended and rising to anger, "let's go, Sakura-chan! Mebuki-baa's waiting for us. Clearly, the teme over here wants to be alone."

"I didn't ask for your company," there's the inborn Uchiha pride shoving itself through the seams, bristling at the rudeness. Who was he to call Sasuke a bastard? When did they even decide that he needs company? Not that he does! "And why would I want to be with the two of you? You turned my skin blue!"

"To be fair, it was pale blue. And it complimented your clothes."

"I don't care."

The girl, Sakura, bats at the blonde's face and then smiles her fox-smile at Sasuke. "Alright then, Sasuke-kun. We'll be going now." It takes Sasuke a second to remember why she knew his name despite the fact that he never gave it to her. They have never been introduced properly before, but they were - are - classmates.

To the boy, Uzumaki, she says, "Race you back?"

Like a switch flipping on, the boy's offense at Sasuke's words seemingly dissipates and the blonde says, "You're on, Sakura-chan!"

With that said, the duo disappears into the rain, blurs of pink and yellow contrasting the gray haze.

They left their umbrellas leaning against the wall of the shed.

.

The blonde and the pinkette - Uzumaki Naruto and Haruno Sakura - are absent the following day. They caught a cold, most likely.

.

The next time Sasuke spoke to them was a year later after a sparring lesson.

.

Uzumaki Naruto fights sloppily. He throws punches around wildly, leaving him open to many attacks, which Haruno makes sure to target. But he's strong, considering how he always sends Haruno reeling when he gets a hit in.

Three years ago, when Sasuke was four years old, he saw his brother sparring with a girl. "Izumi Uchiha," Shisui identified, "Just a few months younger than your brother. Still in the academy, top kunoichi of her class."

"Why is Itachi-nii training with her?" Whether he meant that as an insult to Izumi who was - is - so clearly not on Itachi's skill level or as a protest that Itachi-nii shouldn't be spitting fireballs at girls, Sasuke is no longer sure. He has forgotten most of the bases for his reasonings from two years ago, but he remembers protesting. Shisui had laughed and pat his head. For whatever reason, the reply Shisui gave was, "Don't underestimate her. Better yet: don't underestimate girls. They're terrifying in their own right and shinobi can't afford the arrogance to simply dismiss others, girls or otherwise."

"Arrogance leads to death," Itachi piped in, having left Izumi lying on her back on the training ground. "Remember that, little brother."

Now, watching the two best friends duke it out, Sasuke can't help but see the truth in his brother's words. And why did his brother have to be so wise? It wasn't - isn't - fair, Itachi literally has everything. If this wasn't a sparring lesson between two seven-year-olds, Sasuke's certain that Uzumaki would be dead by now.

Uzumaki jumps over Haruno's low kick. Haruno jumps and throws a punch but Uzumaki brings a hand up and catches the fist that Haruno sends towards his head. The force still sends him half a foot back. In retaliation, he aims his free hand towards her, clipping her cheek just barely but sending her skidding away. Haruno raises her head to stare at Uzumaki, leaving Sasuke a clear view of a bruise already forming on her cheek.

Kami, children are terrifying. His respect for the academy teachers minutely grows as he wonders how they keep children from slaughtering each other for six years.

Sasuke doesn't have to look around to know that everyone - students and overseeing instructors - is impressed. He stamps on the feelings of inadequacy - his classmates may be turning out to be prodigies but it's only been a month since practical sparring lessons were allowed, and Sasuke will not let himself be left behind. He won't.

Finally, the fifteen-minute limit hit and one of the instructors calls the match, "Tie!"

Abruptly, Uzumaki skids to a halt, abandoning the punch he was about to throw to Haruno's face. In turn, Haruno steps aside and catches the back of Uzumaki's collar, effectively saving him from crashing face-first onto the ground. The pinkette looks towards their instructors, to which the man says, "Excellent work, Haruno. Perfect textbook form and agility," but curiously enough, the man adds, "Next time, don't pull your punches."

The last sentence catches Sasuke's attention, and it's definitely not just him who feels uneasy. At the beginning of the sparring sessions, one of the chūnin instructors - Suzume-sensei, usually in charge of the kunoichi classes - explicitly told the students not to beat the other children senseless, but the other chūnin instructor present just told Haruno to disregard Suzume-sensei's warning.

Again, like that time in the rain a year ago, Haruno's eyes flicker. "Alright, sensei," she says in a tone that says she's absolutely not going to do as the man told her. It's the same tone Shisui uses when he wants to cause the clan elders a headache of massive proportions. In addition, Haruno says, "Aren't you going to say anything to Uzumaki, sensei?"

The boy in question peers up at their teacher, various levels of hope and… want for acknowledgement.

But their teacher merely huffs, "All he has is brute force and he abandoned the katas not even halfway into the fight. A shinobi needs to be disciplined; Uzumaki is anything but," he says, blatantly dismissive, eyeing Uzumaki with absolute disgust. The boy's eyes which had been filled with hopes for acknowledgement - now effectively dashed - turns into a glare which he shamelessly directs towards the chūnin. The chūnin stares back disapprovingly and walks away from Uzumaki as if he's not even worth his time.

"It's time for lunch. The next spar starts in an hour. Prepare: Hyūga Hinata and Fūma Ran." With that said, the chūnin instructor leaves, Suzume-sensei following after him.

As if their teacher's words set off a bell, the crowd of children quickly disperse, running off to group themselves with their friends and leaving Sasuke - who was standing a few feet away underneath a tree and observing - Uzumaki, and Haruno. The latter two haven't moved from the sparring circle. Uzumaki's eyes are downcast and Haruno is frowning. Again, Sasuke feels like he's intruding. But…

"Hey," he calls, drawing the other two's attention towards him. He could have said so many things: he could have complimented Haruno's fighting or Uzumaki's unbiased way of fighting - unlike Inuzuka Kiba who went easy on Yamanaka Ino on the basis that she was a girl and got his ass handed to him - or he could have asked why their sensei seemed to hate Uzumaki. But the last question seems too invasive, he feels like the first would make him seem like he has a crush, which, ew no, and the second isn't any different. So instead, Sasuke says, "Can you teach me?"

"What?" they ask in unison.

He's halfway into the classic Uchiha Sasuke maneuver again and his mind is screaming 'damage control'. Hastily, he amends, "I want to learn how you-" he looks towards Haruno, "did that- that kick and punch so quickly, and you-" he looks at Uzumaki, "You only barely grazed Haruno's cheek but her face already has a bruise! So, um," oh no, he sounds like Hyūga Hinata, "can you? Teach me, I mean."

He knows he can just ask Itachi to teach him when he gets back from his ANBU mission. But… but Sasuke doesn't want everything he knows to come from his brother or his father or his clan. They're all singing Itachi's praises and Sasuke knows he'll be left as a forgotten spare if he doesn't make an effort on his own. That's why he's asking.

This is definitely not his inadvertent way of trying to make friends.

Snapping out of his reverie, he finds Uzumaki staring definitely warily. Haruno's watching him quietly. It takes a full few minutes and just when Sasuke's about to cut his losses, Haruno says, "Sakura and Naruto."

"Uh, what?" Sasuke asks dumbly.

"I won't teach you if you won't use our names," she explains, "No 'Haruno' or 'Uzumaki'; Sakura and Naruto."

Uzumaki is gaping openly at his friend as she speaks for him and Haruno expertly ignores him. There's a pleased tint to his eyes, however, and Sasuke just knows he won't disagree with the setup. But still, why? Calling them by their first names implies some sort of familiarity that Sasuke was taught not to address people with until at least a few months of knowing them.

He sees Haruno's eyes soften, "Call it my roundabout way of making friends," she says at his unspoken question. Friends. Friends.

Well, it certainly won't hurt anyone, will it?

"Alright," Sasuke replies and tests out their names, "Naruto, Sakura."

It's stupid but the pleased smiles on their faces makes Sasuke's heart fill with the same feeling he gets when Itachi trains him. "After class, then?" Uzu- Naruto asks, looking back and forth between Sasuke and Ha- Sakura.

Sasuke nods. The sooner they start, the sooner he can impress his nii-san, that's definitely the only reason for his eagerness.

"-to join us for lunch?"

For the nth time, Sasuke asks, "What?"

"I said, do you want to join us for lunch?"

It won't hurt anyone. Sasuke nods and the smile that appears on Naruto and Sakura's faces make him feel inexplicably warmer.


	3. Chapter 3: Age 7: Break

Later on that night, Sakura dreams.

However, she isn't in the sparsely decorated room that her dream-self calls her bedroom. She isn't fighting the other children in the tunnels either or watching nii-san cough discreetly when he thinks she isn't looking. The otter-masked girl who's in charge of medical checkups isn't present either. Instead, she finds herself at _home._

 _She's in her house, which is a first, and sitting on her bed. She's rummaging through the backpack she brings to school, but at the same time, it's_ not _. Her sketchbook is missing and her pencil case full of brushes is gone, leaving only two pink pencils in its place. She looks up, directly at the full-size mirror hanging on her wall, and there's a red ribbon holding her hair from her eyes._

 _Her eyes. They aren't the dark black orbs that no one other than the Uchiha possess; they're a bright jade green._

 _There's a knock on her door. She hears her voice as she says, "Come in!" against her will. The door cracks open and her mother slips in, blonde hair unkempt and - and clad in her chūnin vest. She blinks; the last time her mother wore that vest, she was injured so badly that her career as a shinobi was as good as done. Her mother's blue eyes seem dulled down, if that's possible, and dread settles in her heart as a heavy weight._

 _"Sakura," her mother says and it's the first time she has heard any names in her dreams, "Sakura, sweetie, school has been cancelled. Something terrible has happened."_

She wakes with tears in her eyes for the first time in five years.

* * *

"Sakura-chan?" Naruto can feel a frown forming on his face as he watches Sasuke poke and prod at their mutual friend, his eyes burning with concern. He tears his eyes away from him to look at Sakura-chan. She's drawing mice on her notebook, shadowed green eyes looking somewhere far away. For whatever reason, Naruto feels strange as he looks at her, as if the person peering out of Sakura-chan's eyes wasn't Sakura-chan at all.

"Hey, _dobe_ ," involuntarily, Naruto's eye twitches. Somehow, through some miracle of life, the bastard has it ingrained in his head that insults can come off as affectionate. Worst of all, his insults _do_ feel affectionate, but Naruto will first swallow his tanto before he admits that.

"Yeah, _teme_?" never let it be said that Naruto isn't petty, because he is.

Sasuke frowns, scrunches up his nose in a way that makes Naruto want to tease him – and he will, but not right now – and, clearly through immense self-control, ignores Naruto's own affectionate insult and whispers, "What's wrong with Sakura-chan?"

"Why the heck would I know?"

Sasuke crosses his arms, unimpressed, "Maybe because you basically _live with her_?"

That's – that's a good point, honestly, and Naruto ducks his head, resisting the urge to slam it against their desk. After Mebuki-baa learned that he lived in Konoha's red-light district, she had gone to the Hokage. She did so again and again, for months on end, until one day she returned and asked Naruto if he would like to live with her family. The next day, she returned with official adoption papers. Naruto cried. And now he feels like crying again, because for all that he lives with Sakura-chan, he doesn't even know what happened to make her act like this.

In all the two years that Naruto has known Sakura-chan, she is either bubbly and energetic like the child she is, or calm and reserved but relatively still _kind_. She has never been – what's the word, ah, yes – _despondent._

"I don't know what happened," he says, frowning and feeling more than a little disappointed in himself. There's a poke and he looks up, hopefully conveying his confusion. Sasuke's glaring, hands crossed over his chest. It's cute. It's no wonder that Sasuke's brother spoils him if he gets to see this kid's adorable face on a daily basis.

He sounds like Mebuki-baa. Eugh.

"Don't do that," Sasuke says. Don't do what? " _That_ ," Sasuke says in response to Naruto's silent question, vaguely waving his hands in front of Naruto's face. What the heck is _that_ supposed to mean?

Sasuke wants to slap a hand over his eyes like how Shisui does – _did_. "Sakura's already _sad_ enough for the three of us."

Naruto frowns. It would have been unnoticeable, but Sasuke has been his _friend_ for six months now, and Naruto has always been good at reading people. So he says, "Hypocrite. You're sad, too."

"Looks like we're all gloomy."

Sasuke and Naruto will deny it for the next few years. They did _not_ shriek.

* * *

"I'm fine, guys, really," she says for the nth time that day.

They're in the woods again. Sasuke is practicing shurikenjutsu while simultaneously trying to hide his interested gaze in the tanto that Naruto is swinging around. Sakura is sitting in a tree, a scroll spread out in her lap, and smirking subtly at their exasperated expressions, because they can't walk on trees quite yet. Like the many skills she possesses, she learned tree-walking in her dreams. After she _felt_ how it was done the first time, she tried to do it _out_ of her dreams – and she got in in the first try.

And because Sakura is a good friend, she taught it to her best friends. It's not her fault that they can't quite do it yet.

"Yeah, you say that, but we can see it, y'know," Naruto makes a cutting motion with his tanto, "Something's wrong and you're not saying _what_."

"We just want to help," ironically enough, Sasuke's input is ridiculously unhelpful, "But we can't if you won't tell us what's wrong."

Sakura purses her lips. It's not that she won't… she just _can't_. She can't say that she's been having dreams of her mother on loop, coming into her bedroom and saying that something terrible has happened, because she _knows_ Naruto and she knows he's going to ask why that bothers her so much. Sasuke will then tact on quickly and the both of them will back her in a corner. Somehow she knows that she'll end up telling them all about her dreams and _—_

She can't do that. They can't know about the people she watched die, killed by the unfortunate end of a tipless tanto that she doesn't own in this life. They'll think she's a monster even worst that the fox that she has seen Naruto turn into for watching people die and not feel disturbed in any form. She can't lose her friends. Not again and not like this.

 _...Again?_ Sakura blinks her blurring vision away. Where did that come from?

"Sakura-chan, you're doing it again." Naruto makes his sentence sound like an accusation. Sakura smiles, a subtle twitch of her lips.

"Now, now," she says airily, her hand forming a seal, "I'm fine, don't worry about it. But _you,_ on the other hand, won't be." she grins, pauses and murmurs the technique underneath her breath.

Chakra flows from her body and into the scroll on her lap. Slowly, the mice rise from the surface of the scroll. She can _feel_ her friends gaping as the mice scurry down the tree, and she's right. Sakura looks up and sees the wide eyes of her friends as roughly twenty ink mice surround them. For a bit, Sakura feels proud. This jutsu is almost instinctual and Sakura has long ago been capable of casting it, but still she feels proud because she can _do_ it. A horrible thought had haunted her for a while that she can see all sorts of amazing techniques in her dreams and yet be incapable of doing it. But she can, and she _did_.

"How are you doing this?" comes Sasuke's hushed whisper. Out of the corner of her eyes, she sees the glint of eagerness to learn reflected in his eyes. Naruto says nothing but his own blue eyes are wide, his mouth hanging just a little bit open.

"I'll tell you later," she says it like a promise, "But for now! You two gotta put what you've learned to use. Get rid of _all_ of them," and, at their horrified expressions, she adds gleefully, "Or they're gonna drag you into the woods and tie you to a tree."

Naruto and Sasuke don't even ask her if her ink-mice are capable of tying people up. Naruto simply draws his tanto and runs towards the closest mouse, and Sasuke sends three shuriken flying in the air.

* * *

"You're _evil_ ," the blonde boy in the group seethes and Sasuke can't help but agree with Naruto on this one, "Absolutely, undoubtedly _evil_."

Half an hour later, the sun is beginning to set. Sasuke has used up all his kunai and shuriken and he's more or less covered head to toe in ink. Naruto isn't doing any better. His tanto is somewhere on the ground and his blonde hair is matted with black, like he took a shower in ink. Sasuke distantly shoves 'draws exploding ink-mice' underneath all the other things Sakura can do.

If Sakura was from a clan, Sasuke has no doubt that she'd be off their class and noticed by the council already. Another prodigy. Sasuke hates the fact that he feels bitter about it.

"The sun's going down," he hears Sakura say. Sometime between Naruto's proclamations about her evilness and Sasuke's musings, Sakura jumped from her tree, looking none the worse for wear at all. She turns her head to look down at him from his place on the ground and smiles her fox-smile.

Naruto groans and Sasuke looks away from the sole girl in their little band to look at him. He's propped up by his elbow and wiping the ink off his face. Or trying, at least, but the most he's doing is smearing the thing onto his face even more so that it's covering the strange whisker marks on his cheeks. Sasuke feels like laughing, and he does. Naruto makes a face and Sasuke laughs harder – and then he suffers as Naruto jumps on him and bats at his face, hands wet with ink.

Sasuke's too busy shrieking at his friend to notice Sakura's eyes flicker black.

* * *

 _"Something terrible has happened."_

If Sakura-chan's holding on to Sasuke's hand tighter than she usually does, Sasuke doesn't say anything. Naruto subtly grabs on to Sasuke's hand, sandwiching the Uchiha between him and Sakura-chan as they trek out of the woods. The part of the forest that they practice in is technically part of Uchiha grounds and Naruto knows it's relatively safe.

But it's quiet. Quieter than usual.

After Sakura-chan extended the 'olive branch', as she called it, towards Sasuke all those months ago, their training ground stopped being Sakura-chan's backyard and started being the woods ten minutes away from the academy and twenty minutes away from Sasuke's house. Compound. Whatever. Naruto was fine with that. At least the stab marks on the tree in their backyard would fade away now that no one's stabbing it on a daily basis.

Do trees' wounds heal, too?

"That's strange," Sasuke says, frowning. If he listens intently, there isn't even the slightest sound in the night. The insects aren't chirping and even the birds are quiet. He looks up towards the towering trees. There are no birds there, sleeping or otherwise. "Something's wrong."

And then Sasuke spots it. Beside him, his friends freeze in their tracks as they undoubtedly see what he sees.

It's the gate of the compound, but the steps leading into the compound itself is flooded with warm, warm liquid that Naruto only dreams about seeing when he's finally a full-fled shinobi, spilling out of the steps and spreading in every direction. Naruto feels light, lighter than he has ever felt, and his knees threaten to give out beneath him.

There's blood pouring out like a waterfall out of the compound gates and Sasuke breaks away from their slackening hold and _sprints._

"Sasuke–"

* * *

 _"–you bastard, come back!"_

 _She's not in the Uchiha compound anymore. Naruto's there, he's taller, and he's bleeding through his stomach and screaming his lungs out, and she can't do anything but_ watch _, "Sasuke, you asshole!"_

 _The ground shatters and breaks and—_

—She falls out to see that she's running through the compound, following tiny bloody footsteps, Naruto running beside her and she's calling out Sasuke's name, fear gripping her heart, and _she's never felt this way before._ In the many years since she has seen people die in her sleep, she has never felt this _fear_ , and it's like she's a whole new person. In the corner of her eye, she sees that Naruto has his tanto drawn and Sakura feels her dread choking her. She knows, deep, deep down, that as much as Naruto knows how to cut mice open, he still can't cut through flesh.

There are bodies everywhere. Sakura ignores them, only stopping to pull Naruto along as she runs. She can't leave him here alone or else – _someone will take him –_ he'll get lost among the sea of blood and corpses.

"Sakura-chan, everyone's dead—"

 _"Something terrible has happened."_

"This is Sasuke's house—"

 _Mikoto, smiling sadly as she watches Sasuke and Naruto in the backyard by the pond. Sakura gives her a knowing look and Mikoto gives her a hug._

"He's inside, Naruto, we have to go—"

 _"This is the Quiet Room," Sasuke says solemnly, "It's where father used to talk to Itachi-nii and Shisui-nii."_

 _"Used to?" Naruto asks, eyebrow raised. Sasuke looks down and scuffs the floor, "Shisui's—"_

"—gone. We have to find him, he could be—"

 _"—dead." She's standing over Naruto. He isn't breathing._

Sasuke is in the formal sitting room, writhing on the floor and screaming into the air. There's a _boy_ in front of him, older than the three or them, and his pinwheel-eyes widen imperceptibly as he looks at them. They know it's Sasuke's brother, despite the fact that they have never really met him before. And they make the mistake of looking back.

Naruto gasps and _falls_ , and Sakura—

 _The world is red and she jerks, stumbling backwards. The boy is there, staring at her, but his eyes are wider, staring past her. Hesitantly, she turns around and – she sees herself._

 _But she's taller, her hair is shorter, and she's holding a kunai in her hand. There's a purple diamond smack in the middle of her forehead. Beside her, standing still, is a pale man –_ boy? – _and his hand is on her shoulder. The older her is grim faced and her voice reverberates as she speaks._

 _"Sai, get her out of here."_

* * *

 **A/N: Sai-Sakura gave Naruto a tanto, fight me.**

 **(please don't, i'm weak)**

 **Hey look, I didn't save the Uchiha clan. This is purely self-indulgent and honestly if they're alive then my whole plans will be shot to hell.**

 **Now for a bit of explanations:**

 **This is where the body sharing tag takes an effect. The whole time-travel tag will be more obvious in later parts of the story.**

 **If one looks back to chapter 1, Sakura talks about the memories as if they're simply dreams. And no, she's a kid, she may be smart but she never really came to the conclusion that her dreams are memories in itself, especially since they're not in chronological order. And all of them have been Sai's memories, until the one in the beginning of this chapter.**

 **The Sakura that has been around since chapter 1 is a Sakura that really was a kid. She has a different consciousness from Sai and the older Sakura that was mentioned at the very end is different too.**

 **Basically, just think about Sai and Older-Sakura like the Kyūbi inside Naruto. Naruto has Kurama inside him but he's not Kurama himself. The fox is just sealed inside. Now apply the sealing logic to Sakura here.**

 **Wow this is rlly self-indulgent.**


	4. This Story is Being Rewritten

**A/N: Yeah, I know you hate chapters like these. Trust me, I do, too.**

 **Anyhow, this is to let you know that Two Heads are Better than One is no longer going to be updating - because it's being rewritten and revised. Let me pull a Shino here.**

 **Why? Because I recalled that my first point in writing this was for this to be a fix-it, but if I'm just breezing through their childhood days and just straight up killed all of the Uchiha, well, then there's not much of the 'fixing' part, is there? I'd just be rushing to their genin days and going along with the plot and that's boring.**

 **So I'm rewriting the whole thing. Sorry about that.**

 **If you still wanna see the other mess I call the rewritten version, it's called Two Cards Short of a Full Deck.**


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